Monthly Archives: August 2011

This one’s truly, uh … rich: Billionaire Warren Buffett says folks like him should have to pay more taxes — but it turns out his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn’t paid what it’s already owed for years. That’s right: As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson notes, the company openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002. “We anticipate that we will resolve all adjustments proposed by the US Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for the 2002 through 2004 tax years … within the next 12 months,” the firm’s annual report says. It also cites outstanding tax issues for 2005 through 2009.

Obvious question: If Buffett really thinks he and his “mega-rich friends” should pay higher taxes, why doesn’t his firm fork over what it already owes undercurrent rates?

A question: what is the “fair share” percentage? What kind of definition of “fair” means that some people pay a higher percentage than others? It is the same definition included in Animal Farm where all animals are equal, just some animals are more equal than others.
And here:
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” It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” – Warren Buffett

As has been Buffett’s refrain for years, he wants higher taxes. But during the years of calling for higher taxes, Buffett has continually refused to put his money where is mouth is and pay more himself. In fact, Buffett uses shelters and taxes to avoid paying more taxes himself. He and Bill Gates have set up charitable foundations to avoid paying taxes on their fortunes.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun…. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter…. Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. …Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.’ – Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I would love nothing more than compromise. But I would say to you that compromise that’s not a solution is a waste of time. If my house was on fire, I can’t compromise about which part of the house I’m going to save. You save the whole house or it will all burn down. We either save this country or we do not. And to save it, we must seek solutions.”

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing;
when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men
get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect
them against you…you may know that your society is doomed. ~ Ayn Rand – From: “Atlas Shrugged”